Home Remodel - Guest Bathroom

 The final project I worked on before we moved from Utah was getting the guest bathroom set for selling the house. It took a little less than 4 months from start to finish, which was just slightly longer than my 1 month estimate, but I think it came out pretty good.

Before shots of the bathroom. 

Before shot from the other side standing in the tub.

First job, strip everything out. This involved removing the plastic shower wall.

Then removing the tub and all the fixtures. Turns out the air intake for the furnace ran under the tub, so I will have to be careful with that when installing the new tub. 

Also removed the sink and toilet. The bathroom is a cube now.

A look at the floor with the vinyl flooring torn out. 

First step to putting everything back together was install the tub. This was a giant pain in the ass because of the size and placement of the tub in relation to the door. The tub was just slightly bigger than the door frame so I had to angle it in, and also remove the drywall on the far wall so it could lay flat to slide in. Eventually it was done.

Then I had to run the plumbing up from the basement. 

Before tiling, I laid down concrete floor boards so that the tiles would stick better than to the wood subflooring. I also extended the toilet drain up so it wouldn't get filled with tile mortar.

Testing out the placement of the tiles. It seems they will actually fit really well with minimal weird cut tiles. 

Installation of the tiles. Came out pretty good. I'm starting to like these larger floor tiles. 

And floor grouted and pipe cut down. 

Back to the shower. I ran all of the plumbing lines and installed the fixtures to get exact placements right. They will need to be removed to put up the concrete board and tiles but I want to make sure placement is perfect and there are no leaks before doing that. 

Removed the fittings and added concrete boards to the shower. The wife requested a shelf in the shower so I built one in. Fittings readded to make sure everything still fits and works right.

The wife wanted to add tile behind the toilet and around the sink, so the drywall was removed there and concrete board added for those. Also had to redo the plumbing for the sink. 

Finished up the concrete board around the sink.

Once the concrete board was "plastered", the vanity we purchased had a hole in the back where the plumbing attached. In order for it to not seem weird, I figured I'd paint the back of the vanity black to tie in. Seems weird of of place.

But once the vanity is installed it works well. 

Add the vanity top/ 

Start to tile around the back of the toilet and backsplash of the vanity. I don't have my tile edger yet so I'm waiting on here and will move on to the shower.

Jumping over to the tub, tiling starts off going fairly straightforward. Just getting up to the shelf level where lots more tile cutting will be needed. 

Tiles around the opening. 

And starting to tile on the side walls. At this point I needed to wait until I have the edger to finish off the side by the door frame. 

With the edger I can finish off the sink area, including tiling the right wall next to the sink.

As well as finishing off the left and back walls of the shower. 

Finished off the last wall on the right as well as put in the shelf accent tiles. 

Now is the time for the grout. The wife wanted black grout, which I've never used before. It is a pain to wash off completely. This is after the grout application. 

And after 1 complete wash.

And after the second wash.

Shower area also grouted with 2 washes.

And after the 3rd wash, it finally appears clean. The grout is also sealed to prevent the black from running in the future. 

Once tiling is done we can paint.

Tub tiles washed for the final time, sealed, and the walls painted.

And the fixtures readded back in.

Once painting is done we can start to add the main bathroom features like the toilet and sink.

Sink faucet added and plumbing hooked up.

Starting to piece the last bit of things together.

Water finally hooked back up to the sink.

A tie in from the carpet to the tile. This was eventually stained grey but I don't have a picture of the final version.

And the final shower.

And the final bath with new lights, mirror and towel bars. 

Hovercraft Update

When the pandemic hit I had some time to be able to work on my own projects. One of those projects was my hovercraft, which has been in the works since 2005. Here are the updates for last year through this year. Almost all of the updates are from last year, since we moved across country this year and I haven't found any time to work on it.

July 18th, 2020: Back to work after a several years break. Here I returned to adding the skirt tack strip along the outer edge of the hull. The tack strip is used to attach the upper edge of the skirt, which is what helps a hovercraft hover. 

August 11th, 2020: Finished the skirt attach strips. Getting ready to move on to skinning the top. The strips needed to be added before the top was skinned since access to the inside of the wall would be limited once skinned.

August 14th, 2020: Before I can skin the sides, the front section needs to be filled in with sturdy foam. These blocks are custom cut and then inserted one at a time. Eventually they will be sanded smooth. Starting at the center of the craft and working outwards.

August 16th, 2020: Continuing outwards. Using spray foam to fill in gaps turned out to not work so well since the spray foam wasn't anywhere near as dense as the pink foam. But after some trimming and sanding it made do.

August 23rd, 2020: Finished the foam infill on the front. The pink foam is only used to fill in between the ribs in front of the duct, which is what I have here. I can now start skinning the sides.

September 2nd, 2020: Left and right wing skins are attached. 

September 30th, 2020: Now the interior wing skins are attached. Once the pieces are cut, which does take some fine tuning since they are flexed around, the attachment itself is fairly straightforward. Unfortunately there was a supply chain issue getting the epoxy I needed so I lost all of September to work and epoxy doesn't set in the cold. 

October 30th, 2020: Both skins on the other wing attached and the foam front has been partially sanded down.

November 4th, 2020: Following the wing skins, the foam was sanded down with any imperfections filled in by epoxy since the spray foam didn't work too well. Then the skin between the duct and the cockpit was installed. Lots of clamps to make sure it stayed in place while flexing it around. 

November 16th, 2020: After the central skin I was able to do the last thing for the season and that was to install the lift fan brackets. This involved cutting into the lift duct and the skin I just put on to drop them into place. Hopefully I measure them out accurately but it seems like they should be solid. I then epoxied them into place. I also then fiberglassed over the pink foam, so although it appears to be just foam, it is actually protected.

March 17th, 2021: Unfortunately, after all that work we decided to move back to New York, so the hovercraft needed to make another cross country trip. This involved purchasing another trailer that better fit it and strapping it down.

March 19th, 2021: Once the hovercraft was fully strapped down and covered with tarps, it was set to go.

April 8th, 2021: All packed up and ready to go on a cross country trip.

November 16th, 2021: And all comfy in her new home. She now has her own wood shop that she can sit in and contemplate life.

Home Remodel - Raised Veggie Beds

 Raised Veggie Beds

At the start of the pandemic lockdown in March of 2020, we decided it would be best to expand our veggie beds in order to:

1. Save money by growing some of our own food and 

2. Ensure there is food to be had. 

To do this we also needed to have raised veggie beds since the dogs have a habit of running through and ruining anything else we do. Besides just being functional, we also wanted them to look nice since they would play a pivotal function in the backyard and be easily noticeable by anyone walking by or visiting. We also didn't want to spend a ton of money. 

So this is what we came up with. I included the step-by-step instruction booklet I made for someone else who was interested in making their own based on what I did, but I can assure you, I am no expert and there are likely better methods at going about this since I did this entirely out of my own head based on what the wife had requested.

I started out with framing them to make sure that they weren't too big for the space, but also that my construction techniques would work. I ended up having to take them completely apart joint by joint because the redwood was too brittle to screw directly through and I ended up using outdoor braces similar to the ones I used on the deck construction. 

The plan was to make them weather resistant, hence the redwood, but we also didn't want toxic chemicals so we couldn't use pressure treated wood. And to make them big enough we added the metal panels so it wasn't 100% plywood. Laying them out here, we decided the letter "E" configuration would allow for the greatest access to the entire bed while still allowing maximum veggie growing space.

Slowly connecting the various sections after leveling them. The ground was slightly sloped, so although the middle and right bed approximately line up, the left bed was on an angle.

So I needed to lift it up and level out the ground. Luckily they were built sturdy enough that I could do this fairly easily.

Once the main beds were level I could connect them together. The left bed is not actually level with the other two beds but the connecting section slopes to connect them together. 

Once construction was done, it was time to add the soil. We got enough soil to fill them, however, over time the soil compacted so it only ended up half full by the end of the year.

Soil!

Once the soil was filled in we were able to fill in pea gravel around the beds. And I could also hook up the sprinkler line. The beds actually got placed right on top of a sprinkler head so I was able to remove the head and run a new sprinkler line up through the dirt so that a small sprinkler system could be installed within the beds. This would allow a constant supply of water in the rather dry Utah climate.

And from here we were able to plant several veggie plants that were all seperated out and well watered. It actually worked really well. The back of the beds had a trestle system for climbing plants like tomatoes or green beans with lights installed on top.

Flower Bed Construction Guide

The following 5 images are the pages to the construction guide I created. Just right click and save as you need.

 

The 306 Greatest Books #167 - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. The book can be found on the Norwegian and Observer Book Lists.

Published over the course of eight years from 1759 to 1767, Tristram Shandy represented a departure from the typical books of its day. This book may be more seen as the proto-stream of consciousness novel with the author frequently bouncing around topics like they were in a pinball game. Sterne would go from his primary story, those about himself and his family, to some obscure, barely related tangent in the blink of an eye. He would then realize his tangent and eventually work his way back to the story in question. Although this was clearly the purpose of the book, it got to be extremely irritating. The book is written as an autobiography and stream of consciousness from the perspective of Tristram himself. However, it became abundantly clear that the story wasn't even about Tristram when it takes the author a third of the book to get to his own birth. The book winds up focusing mostly on the life of his uncle, Toby, as well as Toby's servant Trim. But despite the frequent tangents, the book actually turns out to be quite funny. There are times when one of the characters are trying to tell a story of their own and they keep getting interrupted by the other characters, so that each time the one telling the story starts to tell it, a new chapter starts. The title of that chapter then says something like "trying this one again", where eventually it takes the story teller five chapters to get the story finished. Another funny thing is how the book is constructed. Looking at the book itself, I assume most versions are published specifically how the author intended because of the way it is written. In my version of the book there were instances where entire pages were blank or page numbers skipped over on purpose. One such section threw me through a loop because 10 pages were skipped along with an entire chapter. The author then goes on to explain why those pages were skipped over, stating that he purposely ripped out the chapter. It's definitely a clever way of approaching the book and one I had never thought of. Even besides the constant bouncing around of topics, I think the thing that makes this book really difficult for me to read, is the way that it is written. Sentences will seem to go on forever with em-dashes breaking up thoughts within the sentence itself, so it's difficult to tell where a sentence truly begins and ends. This is very reminiscent of the later James Joyce in his Ulysses, a novel I also did not enjoy. Overall, this book felt like a chore to read with the constant thought diversions preventing me from being able to focus on the story myself. Along with the author, I felt my own attention wandering throughout the book. But this is clearly a work before its time. It stands out as a masterpiece of fiction for doing something that nobody else at the time was doing and in a way that made it at least somewhat enjoyable. Would I recommend this for people to read, definitely not, but as a lesson about the history of writing fiction I can definitely see this novel as a significant contributor. 

The 100 Greatest Movies - #39: Doctor Zhivago

I am in the process of watching all of the 100 Greatest movies according to AFI. The current film I just watched is Doctor Zhivago, which is #39. This movie is also on the 100 Greatest Romances list (#7).

Taking place during the Russian Revolution that overlaps with the first World War, the story follows General Yevgraf Zhivago, played by Alec Guinness, as he searches for his long lost niece, the daughter of his half-brother Doctor Yuri Zhivago, played by Omar Sharif. Although narrated in parts by Guinness, the movie moves along fairly consistently through the life of Yuri Zhivago as well as the person identified in the beginning as the mother to Yevgraf's niece, Lara, played by Julie Christie. Created in 1965, the movie does not present the life of Lara in the most favorable light. She is often the victim of abuse, rape, and a whole host of other problems that she seems unable, or unwilling, to stop or change. It is a tragic love story between these two star-crossed lovers who can't seem to make it work between themselves. The videography throughout the movie was simply gorgeous, often over emphasizing some small detail within the scenery, such as a candle melting the ice crystals on a window. The acting was great as well, even though Sharif's overly glassy eyes throughout the movie made it appear as he had tears in his eyes non-stop throughout the movie. But it is a long movie, and one that I don't think modern day audiences will overly enjoy. It took about half-way through the movie before I was fully invested, and by that time it had been a long movie and I was just looking for a break. Overall, not bad, but the story was clearly dated and could have been "four hours shorter" in the words of my wife (the movie is only 3 hours and 20 minutes). I am interested in reading the book however, which hopefully would shed more light on the many of the plot details that the movie seemed to skip over.